Clara went over to Miranda and gave her a kiss on the cheek, telling her she was glad to see her. Then she left the gallery, leaving Miranda and Picot alone.
"You don't seem so glad to see me," the reporter remarked to the still-flustered-looking professor.
"I've tried and tried to get in touch with you—don't tell me your agency didn't tell you," he said by way of protest.
"I know, but I had to stay in Iraq longer than I'd expected—you know what a mess it is over there."
"But how do you know about this?" Picot asked her, gesturing to the gallery.
"Good heavens, Yves, I'm a reporter; I read the newspapers. In London they say there's going to be a revelation. . . ." "Yes, the Bible of Clay."
"I know—Clara and I have a serious difference of opinion about those tablets."
"What do you mean?"
"The way I see it, they're stolen—they belong to Iraq and they shouldn't have been removed without permission."
"And just who could have given that permission? Remember, a war had just started."
"Her own husband—his name is Ahmed Husseini if I'm not mistaken. Even if getting permission from Saddam Hussein himself failed, Ahmed was the head of the Bureau of Archaeological Excavations. Who better to legitimize all this?"
"Miranda, what's done is done. Anyway, we're not going to keep the tablets. When the situation in Iraq clears up, they'll be repatriated. Meanwhile, they'll go to the Louvre, which in addition to having the most important collection of Mesopotamian art and artifacts is incredibly secure."
Fabian interrupted them; he looked nervous.
"Yves, they called from the bank; the armored truck has just left— it's on its way."
"Let's go to the loading dock—come along, Miranda."
When the tablets were laid out in their display case, Clara turned the key in the lock and squeezed Gian Maria's arm emotionally. Then she turned to Picot, Fabian, and Marta, who were standing close by, and smiled.
The museum's chief of security explained once again the extraordinary measures the museum had taken to safeguard the treasures, and Clara seemed happy with what she heard.
"You look awfully nice," Fabian complimented her.
She gave him a peck on the cheek and thanked him. Her two-piece fire-red suit illuminated her tanned face and set off her steel-blue eyes to great effect.
Ten minutes later, the doors of the museum opened to officials of the Spanish government, the vice president and two ministers, and academics from all over the world who'd come to witness what promised to be a truly extraordinary exhibition.
European and American archaeologists alike praised the objects found in Iraq, which were displayed in cases throughout three galleries in the museum. Meanwhile, Marta and Fabian were guiding a group of Spanish authorities, pointing out details of the artifacts and explaining their historical and cultural significance.
Waiters carrying trays of drinks and hors d'oeuvres passed among the guests, who seemed to enjoy the food and drink almost as much as the treasures on display.
Picot and Clara had decided that they wouldn't open the "special" gallery until an hour after the exhibit had opened. At that time, they would solemnly invite the guests and world press into the sanctuary where the greatest treasure of the entire exhibit—the eight clay tablets of the Bible of Clay—was set out in a brilliantly lighted display case.
As they milled about, the guests speculated on what great surprise lay in store for them.
Ante Plaskic spotted his team from Planet Security spread out among the guests, some camouflaged as waiters, some as security guards, some even as invited guests. Nor did he fail to notice that Lion Doyle, despite the constant smile on his face, appeared slightly tense.
The way the theft had been planned, there was no choice but to steal the tablets before the doors to the gallery were opened. They'd be running a huge risk, but it was their only chance. Ante went over the long list of security measures the museum had instituted for the gallery, and then he made his way to the alarm control room. He had ten minutes to grab the tablets and get out.
"Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention, please . . .," Yves Picot said loudly, standing in the middle of the crowded gallery. "I would ask that you complete your visit to these galleries soon, because in fifteen minutes I am going to ask you to accompany me into a very special gallery, where you will be presented with an archaeological treasure of incalculable value. This groundbreaking find will have worldwide repercussions, not only in academia but also in archaeology itself, in society, and in the Church. Fifteen minutes ..."
Picot then turned to a group near him, in which Marta and Fabian were talking to the vice president of Spain. Behind them was Clara, in conversation with a government minister and the chancellor of the University of Madrid. Miranda circled toward them through the crowd.
They all started moving slowly toward the closed gallery doors, chatting animatedly An elegantly dressed older woman in a Chanel suit, her face beautiful and her expression serene, crossed the gallery toward Clara. The woman smiled at Clara, who returned her pleasant greeting; Clara didn't know her, but thought how striking she was. Suddenly the woman stumbled and fell hard against Clara; someone must have accidentally run into her. As the woman regained her balance and walked away, apologizing, Clara winced in pain. She failed to see the slight smile on the elegant, serene face.
Clara went on chatting with the chancellor, telling him that they were about to see cuneiform tablets with a remarkable text inscribed on them, when she abruptly clutched her chest and fell to the floor, to the astonishment of everyone around them.
Yves and Fabian hurried over and knelt down beside her, trying to elicit some reaction—all Clara did was open and close her eyes and gasp, as though trying to wake up from an underwater nightmare.
Fabian called out for a doctor and ambulance, while Ante Plaskic gave a sign to the men of Planet Security's team, who went immediately into action.
One of the guests was a doctor, and he bent down to examine Clara. He discovered a small prick on her left breast, near her sternum—near her heart.
"Quick, call an ambulance!" he repeated. "She's bleeding!"
Two security guards, followed by a tuxedo-clad man, slipped from the room and hurried toward the gallery containing the Bible of Clay.
Ante, too, was rushing, but toward the security-system control room, where monitors displayed every inch of the museum interior. He walked in and put two bullets in the head of the security guard keeping watch on the monitors. Then he pulled the man's body into a corner and locked the door—he couldn't be disturbed now. He skillfully disconnected all the museum's alarms, even as he watched his team enter the gallery and neutralize the two security guards inside. In less than two minutes they'd slipped the tablets into a bag and made their getaway.
The Croatian smiled to himself. The mission was almost complete. Without him as a mole, there was no way anyone could have pulled this off. He was proud.
His eyes then turned to another monitor, where he saw Yves Picot kneeling beside Clara, holding her in his arms, then picking her up and, with Fabian and security guards opening a way through the crowd, carrying her out.
He didn't know why—maybe because she looked so indifferent to all the chaos in the room—but his attention was drawn to a stately, striking older woman who appeared on one of the other monitors. She was the only person who showed no concern for Clara, no worry about her collapse, not even curiosity—she just walked very elegantly toward the exit.
He asked himself what it was the woman had in her hand, because she seemed to be carrying something, but he couldn't make it out through the monitor.
Mercedes Barreda left the museum and took a deep, grateful breath of the warm spring air. She'd always loved the tranquillity and calm of this part of Madrid, a neighborhood called Salamanca. She started walking, a bit aimlessly, immensely happy. She didn't notice two elegantly dressed men toting a large bag hurry out
of the museum and jump into a waiting car. The only thing she was thinking about was how to get rid of the awl that she'd just plunged into Clara's heart. She wouldn't leave any fingerprints, because she'd worn a pair of lovely kidskin gloves, so she could toss it into any drain, but not here, not in this neighborhood where the police would certainly look for it. No, she'd find another spot, far away.
She walked for over an hour, strolling through the tree-shaded streets, then hailed a taxi. "Hotel Ritz," she told the driver.
She thought about going back to Barcelona but decided not to— there was no reason for her to run: Nobody was looking for her, nobody would associate her with the death of Clara Tannenberg. Still, she changed clothes and left the hotel, walking toward the Atocha train station. She found a storm drain near the Prado Museum and threw the long, thin instrument away. Then, walking back toward the hotel, she congratulated herself on how easy it had been to end Clara's life. Why had it been so difficult for those hired guns when she'd done it in just one night?
She'd never wavered in her determination to kill Alfred's granddaughter. When she was just a teenager, living in Barcelona, her grandmother had told her the story of the assassination of Elisabeth of Austria. A man had come up to the empress and plunged a stiletto into her; the empress had died shortly afterward, with only a few drops of blood staining her dress.
When she began dreaming of killing Clara, she'd visualized the moment when she'd plunge the stiletto into her heart. It hadn't been easy to find the weapon she finally used—nobody sold stilettos anymore. She'd looked in all the secondhand stores, even a few souvenir shops, to see if she could find a reproduction. She'd eventually wound up looking through the scrap metal left by the workers of her construction company. Finally she found an awl—almost an ice pick, she thought, but longer and triangular—which she cleaned and sharpened and polished as though it were a work of art.
Back in her hotel room, she opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of champagne, and drank a toast to her triumph. For the first time in her entire long life, she felt fully, completely, truly happy.
Lion Doyle was furious. Clara Tannenberg was dead, but he hadn't killed her, and that meant he wouldn't get paid the rest of his fee. From what he could see, the killer had been a professional—who else would have had the courage and sangfroid to kill Clara in front of hundreds of people? The killer had stabbed her with something long and thin and sharp that had gone straight into Clara's heart and hardly left a trace. But who had it been?
He'd planned to kill her that night. She was staying at Marta Gomez's house, and he knew no one would think anything of it if he turned up there. They'd invite him in, and he'd eliminate the only remaining Tannenberg. He'd figured he would also have to kill Marta, but that was just collateral damage. The problem now, though, was that he couldn't tell Tom Martin he'd finished the job. And it bugged him to see Gian Maria crying like some damned schoolkid as he left the museum with Miranda to go to the hospital where Clara's body had been taken—the authorities had immediately called for an autopsy.
Lion walked into a phone booth and reluctantly called Tom Martin.
"Clara Tannenberg's been killed," he told him. "And .. . ?"
"I don't know who did it," Lion reported shamefacedly. "What! . . . Okay, get back here. We have to talk." "I'll be there tomorrow."
George Wagner had just finished a meeting when his secretary put through an urgent call from Paul Dukais.
"It's done," Paul said jubilantly. "Mission accomplished."
"Everything?"
"Everything! We've got the merchandise. And, by the way, somebody killed your friend's granddaughter."
George gave only the slightest pause. "The package, Paul—when will it be arriving?"
"It's on its way; it'll be there tomorrow."
Wagner had nothing to say about Clara. And there was no objection to Clara's murder from Enrique Gomez or Frankie dos Santos either. She hadn't mattered to them. Her murder, in fact, had nothing to do with them. Their only concern was placing the artifacts on the market as soon as possible. George had suggested that just this once, they all get together to drink to the success of their greatest operation—not just the looting of the Iraqi museums but also the theft of the Bible of Clay. He was itching to get his hands on it, to touch it, even if it would soon be on its way to its buyer.
In the waiting room at the hospital, Yves was pacing back and forth, unable to talk. Miranda, Fabian, and Marta were in the same shape, and all Gian Maria could do was cry.
Two police inspectors were waiting, like the others, for the results of the autopsy. Inspector Garcia, a man in his late forties, had asked the archaeologists to go with him to the police station to try to establish what had happened.
At last, the coroner came out. "Are any of you relatives of Clara Tannenberg?" he asked.
Picot and Fabian looked at each other, not knowing what to say. Marta, as usual, took charge.
"We're friends—she has no one else in Madrid. We've tried to contact her husband, but so far we've been unsuccessful."
"Very well. Sefiora Tannenberg was killed with a sharp object—a stiletto, an ice pick, very long and extremely thin; we aren't sure exactly what it was, but it pierced her heart. I'm sorry."
The coroner gave the police a few more details, then handed his report to Inspector Garcia.
"I'll be here awhile longer, Inspector, if you should need anything."
The inspector nodded. The case, he thought, was more complicated than it might seem, and he needed to get results fast. The press was calling the ministry for information. And the whole thing couldn't have been more sensational: an Iraqi archaeologist murdered in Madrid's National Archaeological Museum at the opening of an exhibit attended by politicians, government officials, and academics, at which a treasure was to be revealed. And the treasure, in turn, had been stolen from under the noses of the museum guards and security agents practically within sight of two hundred invited guests, including the vice president of the Spanish government himself.
He could just imagine the headlines the next day, and not only in Spain—the international press would pick this up from the wire services. He'd already gotten two calls from his superiors, wanting to know what he'd been able to find—especially the motive for the crime, which everyone figured was related to the mysterious treasure. The vice president had been clear—he wanted results now.
And that was precisely what the inspector hoped to get when he interviewed the dead archaeologist's friends.
It was hot at the police station, so he opened the window to let in a little cool air, at the same time motioning Picot and the others to sit down. The young priest was a wreck, clinging to Marta.
It was going to be a long night, since he was going to have to interview each of them, one by one, to try to answer two questions: Who had wanted Clara Tannenberg dead, and why?
The inspector's assistant turned on the TV set in the office, just in time for the nine o'clock news. They all fell silent, watching the images from that afternoon they'd never forget.
The news anchor was saying that in addition to the murder of the Iraqi archaeologist and a security guard whose body had been found later, a brazen robbery had taken place in the Archaeological Museum—someone had just walked out of the heavily fortified building with eight cuneiform clay tablets, priceless Mesopotamian treasures that some archaeologists had called the "Bible of Clay." That was the much-publicized "secret treasure" to be unveiled.
Yves Picot slammed his fist down on the desk; Fabian cursed incredulously. They'd killed Clara in order to steal the Bible of Clay, Picot said, and the rest agreed with him completely—undoubtedly that explained the murder.
Gian Maria's cry of anguish shocked them all. The priest was watching the screen, and a look of horror had come to his face as the museum's surveillance tape was aired and he saw Clara walking across the gallery with the chancellor, the two of them surrounded by attendees. Suddenly Clara seemed to stumble and t
hen kept walking, until two or three seconds later she fell senseless to the floor.
But Gian Maria saw something else, something the others were incapable of seeing. In the midst of the crowd, for just one split second, he had glimpsed the profile of a woman he knew very, very well.
It was Mercedes Barreda, the little girl from Mauthausen, the little girl who, with his father and his other lifelong friends, had suffered the mind-numbing cruelty of Hitler's concentration camps and watched her mother die.
Instantly, Gian Maria realized that Mercedes was Clara's killer, and he felt a terrible sharp pain in his chest—his very soul was on fire. He couldn't tell anyone, could never denounce her, because that would be tantamount to denouncing his father. Yet not reporting her would make him an accomplice to Clara's murder and a sinner in the eyes of the Lord.
Inspector Garcia was asking him questions: What had he seen on the screen? What did he see there? But Gian Maria, his voice strained and thready, said it was nothing, just the shock of once again watching Clara die.
Yves Picot, Marta Gomez, and Fabian Tudela believed him, but Gian Maria's behavior had planted the seed of doubt in Inspector Garcia's mind—and in Miranda's too. She told herself that she had to get her hands on that news report so she could go over it with a fine-tooth comb, until she found some clue that would explain the priest's behavior.
Yves explained to Inspector Garcia in great detail what the tablets looked like and alerted him to not just the archaeological value of the Bible of Clay but also its religious value. The inspector was fascinated by the story Professor Picot told him of their last few months in Iraq. Out of Gian Maria he got little more than stammered monosyllables.
Time after time, the inspector asked Picot and the others to tell him everything about the last hours before the murder—who was invited to the opening, whom they'd seen, who knew about the existence of the tablets, whom they suspected. He wanted a list of everyone who'd had any contact whatever with the tablets. The five of them left the police station exhausted, convinced that the clues to the murder-theft led somewhere so dark they couldn't see it.
The Bible of Clay Page 58
